Get in the Collaborative Spirit

“Teamwork is the ability to work together toward a common vision… It is the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results.”

Andrew Carnegie

Teamwork is a word that slips so easily off the tongue. Yet, as a concept, teamwork can be exceedingly difficult to achieve in real life. To germinate and take seed, true teamwork and collaboration requires subordinating individual interests, egos, and opinions to the unity of the group and achieving the shared end goal. It requires deep trust and respect for the unique skill set, knowledge, and value each individual brings to the table. The ability to listen to each other and understand the challenges faced by each team member is critical to the success of the collective goal. There is less “me” and more “we” as a team works together, dividing the tasks but multiplying the chances for success. There is also individual accountability, meaning that each member of the team is held solely responsible for the contribution he or she brings to the completion of the goal.

Building a team environment doesn’t just happen. It takes work, commitment, and dedication on the part of each team member, and nowhere today is teamwork and collaboration more relevant and needed than in the dental profession. As diagnostic and treatment protocols become more complex, digital delivery processes more prevalent, restorative material options more diverse, and patients ever more demanding, the need for dental professionals to work together using an interdisciplinary approach has become paramount to the value of the treatment received by the patient. It also positively impacts the business success of each individual team member.

However, to best work together, dental professionals must learn together. The best way to accomplish partnered learning is to learn from dental teams that have successfully melded their unique sets of dental knowledge into a team-minded spirit of patient care. That is the mission of IDT’s ColLABoration 2014 event, being held for the second year in conjunction with the Greater New York Dental Meeting. Collaboration 2014 celebrates the dentist/technician team approach to best-practices dentistry by offering team-based education presented by leading-edge clinicians and technologists. This year, IDT has invited internationally recognized dentists and technologist teams for keynote presentations. Dr. Kenneth Malament, MSD, Clinical Professor Tufts University and Thomas Singh, MDT; Dr. David Hornbrook, FAACD, FACE of the Hornbrook Center and Peter Pizzi, CDT, MDT; Dr. Lily T. Garcia, MS, FACP, Associate Dean for Education Department of Prosthodontics at the University of Iowa College of Dentistry and Robert Kreyer, CDT; and Dr. Vincent Celenza, DMD and Simon Wong, MDT are among those invited to present at this year’s event. Stay tuned! Many more will be announced in the months to come.

Pam Johnson
Editor-in-Chief
pjohnson@aegiscomm.com